All we know about Nvidia’s next-generation Tegra chip

Nvidia's "Wayne" will be perfect fit for high-res tablets and ARM laptops.

Nvidia's Tegra 3 system-on-a-chip for smartphones and tablets is getting a bit long in the tooth, but the company still hasn't officially announced when its successor, an SoC codenamed "Wayne," will be available in shipping products. We expect an official announcement soon—perhaps even at Nvidia's press conference at CES—but for now we're still piecing together information from older announcements and alleged leaks.

One such leak appeared this week, courtesy of Chinese-language site ChipHell. If it's legitimate (and it does appear to line up with information we already knew), it points to Wayne being a powerful SoC best suited for high-end tablets, but also a good fit for small, inexpensive ARM-based laptops or desktops. What we know so far paints a remarkably complete picture of what Wayne looks like, what it will be good at, and just how much better it will be than Tegra 3.

The CPU and GPU: a big step up

This leaked slide gives us a clear look at Wayne. You know, if it isn't faked.

As in any SoC, the biggest focus is going to be on the CPU and the GPU. Tegra 3 combined four Cortex-A9 CPU cores with an extra low-power "companion core" that will switch on when a device is asleep or idle to continue performing background tasks. Wayne changes those A9 cores in for higher-performing Cortex-A15 cores. While we don't know clock speeds yet, you need look no further than our Nexus 10 review to see how thoroughly even a dual-core Cortex-A15 beats a quad-core Cortex-A9.

Those four A15 cores will again be accompanied by a low-power "companion core" to help with power consumption, though from the leak it's not clear what kind of core this will be. It could be an implementation unique to Nvidia. But it may also be a variant of ARM's big.LITTLE specification that pairs Cortex-A15 cores with Cortex-A7 cores supporting all of the same instructions but running more slowly and consuming less power. Either way, that extra core plus a shrink to a more power-efficient 28nm manufacturing process (already used by Qualcomm in many of its chips and by Nvidia itself in its recent GPUs) should help with the higher power consumption presented by the new CPU and GPU architectures.

That custom-made GPU is likewise a big upgrade over its predecessor. It's not just that the GPU core count has increased—from 12 in Tegra 3 to 72 in Wayne—but those cores will almost certainly be more closely related to Nvidia's current GeForce chips. Tegra 3 uses GPU cores with fixed functions—there are eight pixel shader cores and four vertex shader cores. Fixed-function cores like these hark back to older desktop GPU designs like the GeForce 6 and GeForce 7 series.

Wayne is widely expected to make the jump to a unified shader model in which the GPU's cores can perform pixel or vertex operations (and others as well) based on what the application demands—Nvidia's desktop GPUs implemented this technology back in 2006 with the GeForce 8 series and have continued using it since. Wayne will also support current standards like Direct3D 11 and OpenGL 4.0, as well as Nvidia-owned and developed technology like PhysX and CUDA. This opens the door to more GPU-accelerated applications on devices using Wayne SoCs.

Enlarge/ High-resolution, high-density displays like the one in the Nexus 10 will be fully supported by Wayne.

Andrew Cunningham

Finally, like Samsung's Exynos 5, Wayne is courting tablet makers who want to use high-density displays like the one in the Nexus 10—the SoC natively supports both video encoding and decoding at 2560x1440, just a shade less than the Nexus 10's 2560x1600. We don't know anything about the chip's memory bandwidth yet, but it should at least be comparable to chips like the Exynos 5 and Apple's A5X and A6X if it's pushing such high-res displays. Dual-channel LPDDR2 and LPDDR3 RAM (both typically used in phones and tablets) is supported, as is DDR3L (a 1.35V version of standard desktop and laptop DDR3, down from the standard 1.5V).

Making connections

Enlarge/ The Exynos 5 SoC in Samsung's ARM Chromebook supports both USB 3.0 and dual displays over HDMI, same as Wayne.

Andrew Cunningham

As with the Exynos 5, the CPU and GPU are a big part of the story, but they're not all of it. Nvidia is adding all the necessary connectivity options to the SoC so it can be part of low-cost laptops and convertibles, too—this will prove useful in devices running things like Chrome OS and Windows RT.

In addition to the standard storage interfaces you see supported by most ARM chips—UART, SDIO, I2S, and I2C—Wayne also natively supports USB 3.0 and dual-display output over HDMI. These capabilities again suggest Nvidia has hopes for Wayne outside of tablets—USB 3.0 and dual-display support are both great features to have if you're trying to compete with low-cost Atom convertibles or laptops. There's no mention on this slide about whether Wayne will natively support the SATA interface as the Exynos 5 does—whether that's a feature the chip will lack or just information missing from this slide is hard to say.

LTE support

An older Nvidia slide shows a second chip, Grey, that is more smartphone-oriented than Wayne and should include integrated LTE support.

Nvidia

The slides for Wayne offer no mention of LTE support, one of the sticking points that has kept Tegra 3 from seeing wide adoption in smartphones. Most OEMs have chosen rather to go with chips from Qualcomm which offer both separate LTE chips as part of a package deal and products with an LTE baseband integrated into the chip itself. This isn't an oversight; rather, Wayne simply isn't designed to serve the mainstream smartphone market (though that doesn't preclude it from appearing in high-end phones, as the Android OEMs continue to one-up each other in the specifications game).

There's another chip, codename "Grey," that has been slated to come out alongside Wayne on Nvidia roadmaps for over a year (Xbit Labs first reported it back in September of 2011). That chip will be less powerful than Wayne—take it with a grain of salt; Wikipedia says it will use Cortex-A9 cores like the current Tegra 3, and articles that talk about its architecture cite Wikipedia—but it will also consume less power, making it better suited for smartphones. Its other claim to fame is that it will integrate LTE capabilities from Icera, a company acquired by Nvidia last year. We know a bit less about Grey than we do about Wayne, but it has always been targeted to ship slightly later. I'd expect to hear more about it either at or after Wayne's official unveiling.

Nvidia is playing catch-up, but Wayne looks to be worth the wait

Nvidia isn't on the cutting edge with either Wayne or Grey—Samsung has already beaten them to market with a Cortex-A15-based chip that is already shipping in tablets and laptops (though Wayne looks to be more powerful than the Exynos 5 Dual). Qualcomm is eating everyone's lunch when it comes to shipping chips with integrated LTE.

What's really intriguing about Wayne is its GPU, which makes sense given Nvidia's pedigree. Using GPU cores more similar to those in its desktop and laptop parts opens up possibilities not just for gaming, but for GPGPU activities as well. It gives the next-generation Tegra a potential leg-up in small, inexpensive laptops like Samsung's ARM Chromebook. We will, of course, keep you abreast of Nvidia's official announcements as they happen, and we look forward to doing a full performance evaluation of both Wayne and Grey as soon as they begin appearing in shipping products.

Many ARM designs are pretty modular w/r/t number of cores, though the most common setups are two and four. Not sure if there will be dual-core Wayne parts, at least not based on this leak, but I suppose it's entirely within the realm of possibility.

What interests me most about these articles is the super high resolution ("Retina") on devices smaller than desktop monitors.

Can someone more knowledgable than I speak to the technological (as opposed to economic) feasibility of making desktop monitors using retina-class resolutions? My 27" monitor is still 1920x1080, and while it's fine, it could still be better. Is there an inherent difficulty with getting the pixel size and pitch that small using TFT displays?

What interests me most about these articles is the super high resolution ("Retina") on devices smaller than desktop monitors.

Can someone more knowledgable than I speak to the technological (as opposed to economic) feasibility of making desktop monitors using retina-class resolutions? My 27" monitor is still 1920x1080, and while it's fine, it could still be better. Is there an inherent difficulty with getting the pixel size and pitch that small using TFT displays?

What interests me most about these articles is the super high resolution ("Retina") on devices smaller than desktop monitors.

Can someone more knowledgable than I speak to the technological (as opposed to economic) feasibility of making desktop monitors using retina-class resolutions? My 27" monitor is still 1920x1080, and while it's fine, it could still be better. Is there an inherent difficulty with getting the pixel size and pitch that small using TFT displays?

Part of the problem is the material cost. No matter how much you perfect your manufacturing technic some panels are just waste. Bigger panels that need to be thrown away equals more cost associated.

Once you move beyond tablets the ARM architecture is the worst possible choice you could make. Just the idea that I need different compiled versions makes me nauseous.

“X86 for the next three millennia”, eh?

Looking at the number of units moving, and the capabilities highlighted in this article, a fair number of developers may start on ARM and then port to X86. That'd be no different from the evolution that happened from mainframes to minis to PCs. Why wouldn't that be the next likely step?

Dual core Big.Little type configuration, clocked lower and smaller than Wayne and with built in LTE targeted at smartphones. Clearly Wayne itself will be too big for smartphones, but a dual core Cortex a15/7 combo with LTE and half the graphical muscle of Wayne could probably fit into today's massive phones.

Because 8 cores is probably a bit overkill for tablets and Chromebooks.

-Kasoroth

Or their marketing people think that people will start catching on to the ploy when their tablet/phone has 4x the number of cores as their laptop (which tend to still be largely 2 core).

While having more cores do help in some situations, quad core as it is, is already largely overkill for mobile devices. Some tasks will benefit quite a lot, but it's far less bang for you buck than 2 cores that are much faster per core (which is also harder to do).

I'd really be interested in Ars doing a few tests with some quad-core tablets. Run them through various tasks (from casual workloads to more demanding ones to flat out obscene), and all the while record the CPU utilization. It'd be interesting to see exactly how well modern (likely Android) mobile software can leverage multiple cores. Just a wild guess, but I'd bet that each additional core is worth half as much as the previous one. Of course, I could also be totally wrong- I'd be quite shocked to learn that Android software by and large would effective leverage a quad core SoC.

Well, the OS and the applications themselves, no? Don't programs have to be written to take advantage of multiple cores (multithreading?). That said, Android and Windows RT ought be able to at least enjoy better multitasking with multiple cores, even if the applications can't tell the difference between a single, dual or quad core CPU.

And, isn't ARM expected to be suitable for certain types of servers? AMD is working on a 64-bit ARM server CPU/solution, aren't they? Wouldn't that be an area of growth for Nvidia?

Tablet / laptop combos are for companies that can't figure out how to actually make a tablet work. So they make a combo device that tries to be both... such devices fail at being tablets because they are too heavy. But at least they can still be laptops with a cool touchscreen though.

Once you move beyond tablets the ARM architecture is the worst possible choice you could make. Just the idea that I need different compiled versions makes me nauseous

In the "traditional" embedded market, sometimes even having to compile your away around CPU bugs was acceptable.ARM's diversity of architectures was not an issue.When you move to applications like smartphones and tablets, then it becomes a problem.But ARM is standardizing it now, with AArch32 and AArch64.

Quote:

“X86 for the next three millennia”, eh?

Looking at the number of units moving, and the capabilities highlighted in this article, a fair number of developers may start on ARM and then port to X86. That'd be no different from the evolution that happened from mainframes to minis to PCs. Why wouldn't that be the next likely step?

Just to be clear, other than the older mali chips in exynos 4, the other major mobile gpu designs have had unified architecture and opencl support for awhile now.I'll be a bit curious to see how much this gpu of nvidia's sucks battery.

What interests me most about these articles is the super high resolution ("Retina") on devices smaller than desktop monitors.

Can someone more knowledgable than I speak to the technological (as opposed to economic) feasibility of making desktop monitors using retina-class resolutions? My 27" monitor is still 1920x1080, and while it's fine, it could still be better. Is there an inherent difficulty with getting the pixel size and pitch that small using TFT displays?

There may be manufacturing issues for the panel, but the bigger and more intractable concern is that the number of pixels the GPU must push grows as the square of the linear resolution(dpi). Even with a small phone or tablet display, going retina produces a huge jump in the number of pixels, requiring a *much* more powerful GPU just to keep performance the same. Because of the way squaring works, high dpi on a small display is at least doable, but on a huge 27" or 30" display, you are squaring a much larger number, so pixel increase is a much larger multiple for a large display than a small one.

Sure, it will happen at some point, but the need for a massively more powerful GPU works strongly against the current trend towards more power efficiency. For 2D work, that may be reasonably doable, but gamers are not going to want retina displays for a long, long time, because it will give you a massive frame rate hit.

What interests me most about these articles is the super high resolution ("Retina") on devices smaller than desktop monitors.

Can someone more knowledgable than I speak to the technological (as opposed to economic) feasibility of making desktop monitors using retina-class resolutions? My 27" monitor is still 1920x1080, and while it's fine, it could still be better. Is there an inherent difficulty with getting the pixel size and pitch that small using TFT displays?

There may be manufacturing issues for the panel, but the bigger and more intractable concern is that the number of pixels the GPU must push grows as the square of the linear resolution(dpi). Even with a small phone or tablet display, going retina produces a huge jump in the number of pixels, requiring a *much* more powerful GPU just to keep performance the same. Because of the way squaring works, high dpi on a small display is at least doable, but on a huge 27" or 30" display, you are squaring a much larger number, so pixel increase is a much larger multiple for a large display than a small one.

Sure, it will happen at some point, but the need for a massively more powerful GPU works strongly against the current trend towards more power efficiency. For 2D work, that may be reasonably doable, but gamers are not going to want retina displays for a long, long time, because it will give you a massive frame rate hit.

People already run Eyefinity setups on a single card. 72 cores to push 2560 x 1600, but we can't push 3840 x 2160 with 1000 or even 1500+ cores on a modern GeForce? I don't buy it. Sure framerates will take a hit...on the other hand, games haven't really pushed GPUs since Crysis 1.

Dual core Big.Little type configuration, clocked lower and smaller than Wayne and with built in LTE targeted at smartphones. Clearly Wayne itself will be too big for smartphones, but a dual core Cortex a15/7 combo with LTE and half the graphical muscle of Wayne could probably fit into today's massive phones.

Because 8 cores is probably a bit overkill for tablets and Chromebooks.

-Kasoroth

Or their marketing people think that people will start catching on to the ploy when their tablet/phone has 4x the number of cores as their laptop (which tend to still be largely 2 core).

While having more cores do help in some situations, quad core as it is, is already largely overkill for mobile devices. Some tasks will benefit quite a lot, but it's far less bang for you buck than 2 cores that are much faster per core (which is also harder to do).

I'd really be interested in Ars doing a few tests with some quad-core tablets. Run them through various tasks (from casual workloads to more demanding ones to flat out obscene), and all the while record the CPU utilization. It'd be interesting to see exactly how well modern (likely Android) mobile software can leverage multiple cores. Just a wild guess, but I'd bet that each additional core is worth half as much as the previous one. Of course, I could also be totally wrong- I'd be quite shocked to learn that Android software by and large would effective leverage a quad core SoC.

How about it, Ars?

That's actually a really interesting idea, if we can measure CPU usage consistently. My time is booked pretty much through CES at this point, but I'll put it on my article pitch list. :-)

Well, the OS and the applications themselves, no? Don't programs have to be written to take advantage of multiple cores (multithreading?). That said, Android and Windows RT ought be able to at least enjoy better multitasking with multiple cores, even if the applications can't tell the difference between a single, dual or quad core CPU.

Pretty much anything with a touch UI has to be multithreaded. If you try and do it all in one thread it'll be a slide show the instant your program tries to actually do anything. In this sense, tablets are probably better able to benefit from multiple cores then desktops.

Because 8 cores is probably a bit overkill for tablets and Chromebooks.

-Kasoroth

Or their marketing people think that people will start catching on to the ploy when their tablet/phone has 4x the number of cores as their laptop (which tend to still be largely 2 core).

While having more cores do help in some situations, quad core as it is, is already largely overkill for mobile devices. Some tasks will benefit quite a lot, but it's far less bang for you buck than 2 cores that are much faster per core (which is also harder to do).

I'd really be interested in Ars doing a few tests with some quad-core tablets. Run them through various tasks (from casual workloads to more demanding ones to flat out obscene), and all the while record the CPU utilization. It'd be interesting to see exactly how well modern (likely Android) mobile software can leverage multiple cores. Just a wild guess, but I'd bet that each additional core is worth half as much as the previous one. Of course, I could also be totally wrong- I'd be quite shocked to learn that Android software by and large would effective leverage a quad core SoC.

How about it, Ars?

That's actually a really interesting idea, if we can measure CPU usage consistently. My time is booked pretty much through CES at this point, but I'll put it on my article pitch list. :-)

I don't think this is the right thing to measure. On a tablet you don't care about FLOPS or MIPS. You're not factoring prime numbers or inverting matrices. Therefore measuring cpu use (throughput) doesn't really tell you much since it doesn't really track anything you care about.

Probably what you want to know is latency. How quickly can a system respond to input with the desired output. You could have a situation where the second core is used only 1% of the time, but that 1% of the time is spent substantially improving the latency for user interaction leading to a much more responsive system.

What interests me most about these articles is the super high resolution ("Retina") on devices smaller than desktop monitors.

Can someone more knowledgable than I speak to the technological (as opposed to economic) feasibility of making desktop monitors using retina-class resolutions? My 27" monitor is still 1920x1080, and while it's fine, it could still be better. Is there an inherent difficulty with getting the pixel size and pitch that small using TFT displays?

Largely its about Windows 7 not properly scaling the UI to work on high DPI systems. Economic factors are also a problem, but those are solvable if you can sell enough monitors. Until Windows 8, that wasn't possible.

Andrew Cunningham / Andrew has a B.A. in Classics from Kenyon College and has over five years of experience in IT. His work has appeared on Charge Shot!!! and AnandTech, and he records a weekly book podcast called Overdue.